Memories
by Fred-Weasley-Isn't-Dead
Summary: Gabe reminsices with Charlie about some of his favorite memories from when she was a baby. One-shot.


I glare down at my History homework. How the hell was I supposed to know what Lincoln was thinking when he gave the Gettysburg Address or what type of gun John Wilkes Booth used to kill him. My teacher was insane if she though we actually knew this crap. I groan and slam my notebook shut, flicking on the tv.

"Charlie! Did you finish your homework?" My mom calls from her room with dad. Yes, my name is Charlie. And yeah, I'm a girl. My name is actually Charlotte, but my older sister Teddy must have a thing for girls with boy nicknames because her real name is Theodora. Whatever, I hate my nickname but I don't have a choice because Teddy gave it to me when I was born. My mom is Amy Duncan; she works at a hospital as a nurse. I visit her there sometimes, when I can sneak out of lunch without Hawk-Eyes Reese, the monitor for my lunch period, seeing me. My dad, Bob, is an exterminator, a nasty business if you ask me, but at least I never have to worry about spiders in my room.

"Yeah Mom, and call me Charlotte!" I shout back, lying my butt off. I'd finish it tomorrow before homeroom.

Okay, my name is Charlotte 'Charlie' Duncan. I'm fifteen years old. My oldest sister is Teddy. She's thirty. Old, I know. Then our oldest brother is PJ. He's two years older than Teddy so he's thirty two. Then my older brother, but their younger is Gabe. He's twenty five. My parents took a break after Gabe was born. A ten year break and I was a mistake but I like to think that they wanted to take some time recuperating from Gabe because what I've seen from Teddy's video diary, he wasn't exactly what you and I would call "_calm"._ Apparently he wasn't a fan of me being the youngest. That makes two of us. He liked the attention taken away from him when baby arrived so he caused more trouble to get it back. His problems, not mine.

Anyway, he still lives here because he's only a junior in college because he took time off to travel the world. He brought everyone in my family back a bunch of stuff. I got a porcelain doll from every country he visited. I have them all upstairs in my room in a cabinet. My favorite is the one he got me from Ireland; it's supposed to be an Irish dancer, which I know he picked out especially for me because I do Irish dancing. It has a sparkly purple dress on with hard shoes and curly auburn hair. It's really pretty. But back to Gabe, despite living in the same house and having blood relations, and the occasional doll from the different countries, we're not close, not even a little bit. Our longest conversation was "**Pass the cereal?**" "_Sure_." "**Thanks**." Some days, we didn't acknowledge each other's presence in, let alone even talk. Here he comes now. Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear.

"Hey Charlie." He smiles at me before taking a seat on the couch next to me.

"Gabe." I nod slightly, turning my attention to the Nick show _SpongeBob_. It was a new episode. How they managed to keep coming up with ideas since the nineties amazes and befuddles me.

"Can we talk?" He blurts out, reaching for the remote.

"Sure…" I trail off hesitantly.

"I know we're not exactly close friends or even friends for that matter. And I know that Teddy and PJ wish they were around more because neither of us are exactly close to anyone in our family. And I wanted to say that I'm sorry for being such an as-being so mean to you when we were younger."

"Gabe, firstly, don't be afraid to curse. I don't care if Mom and Dad hear." I shrug, fiddling with my nose ring. Teddy had taken me to get it when she came down a few, Ithink three, months ago. Mom went ballistic and I'd been grounded for two months and Teddy lucked out with just a lecture because she was too old to be grounded by our mom anymore. Lucky girl. Ever since, though, her monthly visits had turned a bit chilly when you put her and Mom in the same room. Trust me, not pleasant. That's why I don't intend on telling them about the little tattoo on my right foot from when PJ came down. Yeah, my siblings are pretty damn awesome. "Secondly, it's the past. What's done is done." When I return my attention to the show, he shuts it off and sighs.

"Charlie, listen to me," he demands slash pleads. I roll my eyes and pull my feet to my chest, turning my gaze to him. "I want us to be friends because right now we barely classify as siblings."

I arch an eyebrow at him. "And how do you propose we do that because from Teddy's videos you don't seem like the type of person that would have "_quality bonding time_"?"

Gabe laughs and runs a hand through his brown hair. How it was brown I have no clue. My mom is blonde, my dad is blond, PJ is blond, and Teddy and I are blonde. Gabe was the only one with brown hair in our family. It just adds to my theory that he was adopted. Of course, that was a secret theory. Last time I brought it up, Dad nearly spazzed on me, no thank you. He notices me looking at his hair. "You know, when you were born I was so hopped up on sugar, I had shaved it off in a faux-hawk."

I laugh this time. "You did not."

"Oh really?" He sticks his hand in his pocket and draws out his wallet, opening it to the little see-through slot. In it was a picture of a chick dressed like Frankenstein, two guys covered in feathers and a kid with a faux-hawk. He points to faux-hawk kid. "That's me. The girl with green paint on? Teddy. The guys covered in feathers, that's Dad and PJ." We share a look and both start laughing. He pulls out a laminated picture that looked pretty worn already. It had a guy in a blue shirt and jeans, a pretty woman in a black shirt with various colors on her shoulder, a girl in a blue jacket and a cherry shirt smiling for the camera, a boy in yellow smiling mischievously as he leaned on the shoulder of a guy wearing a red and black plaid shirt open to reveal a cobalt one. The last member of the family was a little girl dressed in pink holding one of the hundred teddy bears that surrounded them on the couch. I recognized them from Teddy's videos. The guy in blue was Dad, the woman was Mom, Gabe was wearing the mischievous smile, big shocker there, PJ was in the plaid shirt, Teddy was dead center and the little baby was me.

"I guess when Teddy said she was gonna help me survive our special family, she wasn't kidding when she said special," I mumble.

"Please, that's just the start. One time PJ, when he was _seventeen_, got you mixed up with a boy. He was flirting with this girl at the park who had her baby brother in a stroller identical to yours and he got distracted. We didn't find out until the baby peed all over the house."

"No comment." Holy God. How bad was he? Was he ever in a mental class?

"No, no he wasn't." Gabe smirks.

My head shot up. I hadn't said that out loud.

"No, you didn't."

"Dude, enough with the creepy-mind-reader-thing." I shudder.

"I'm not. Every time I tell that to someone, after getting slapped by PJ because I make sure he's there when I tell the person, the make the same face that you did, wondering if he was ever in a mental institution. And no, he wasn't."

"Our family is seriously wacked up." I like to think I turned out normal, or normal-ish.

"Our mom and Teddy were the high school mascot, Whammy the Ram, during their time there." I shudder again. How narrowly I managed to escape that. "Dad missed his step on a rubber duck and slid down the stairs while you got thrown up in the air, only to have Dad catch you again. You know PJ's friend, Emmet?" I nod. "He challenged PJ to a baby race with his nephew and you ended up taking your first steps there. Another time, you got arrested." He grins.

"For what?" I laugh, gathering my hair and pulling it to one side, riveted by Gabe's stories from when I was a baby.

"For "_stealing"_ a pair of sunglasses. We thought we were successful in keeping it from Mom and Dad until Mom saw your pictures plastered all over the store. Then there was that demon singing horse. It kept getting the same song stuck in my head."

"I remember that! It talked to me. It tried to get me to get rid of you until I was six. Mom put it in the attic."

Gabe pulled a face. "Oh God!" I giggled. "There was the time PJ and Teddy staked out against Dad in their old tree house when he made a deal with Mrs. Dabney that if he cut down the branch she would bring her annoying dog in. It held too many memories for them so they waited it out until I went up with Mom who brought you with her and then we pelted Dad with balloons." I laughed. "That is until Dad came up and he broke the tree house. We found out that it wasn't even Mrs. Dabney's dog; she was watching it for a few days. So then we built the one we have now."

Wow. My family was something else.

"Oh, this one time we had a photographer come over and take pictures of you, PJ and I. Man was Mom pissed. That is until the photographer got pictures of the two of you together. PJ once used you to get sympathy from his costumers from his Kwikki Chiki delivery job and told them Mom was in the hospital while my first crush came over with her mom; that was a mess." He groaned, chuckling.

"Our family…" I trail off.

"Is very special." He laughs, watching my eyes bug out. His watch beeped. "Oh. I have class." My phone went off at the same time.

"Practice."

"I'll drive you," He offered.

"'Kay." I shrug. "Mom!" I call upstairs. "Gabe's driving me to practice."

"Okay!" She calls back down. I could hear her smiling.

Gabe grabs my jacket and tosses it to me. I slide it on while he opens the door.

"Hey Gabe?" I smile. He turns around. I run to him and throw my arms around his neck. He stands there for a minute before I feel his arm wrap around my waist.

"Come on kiddo. You're gonna be late." He gives me a gentle shove out the door and into the snow.


End file.
